Meditative Thought of the Day

Here at Ten Fingers 6 Strings, we are concerned about the mental and spiritual well being of our readers intelligent, non-verbal, thought recipients. So, I bring you a thought of the day to meditate on from editorialist intelligent, non-verbal, thought giver, George Will:

Vast numbers of credentialed -- that is not a synonym for "competent" -- members of the "caring professions" have a professional stake in the myth that most people are too fragile to cope with life's vicissitudes and traumas without professional help. Consider what Sommers and Satel call "the commodification of grief" by the "grief industry" -- professional grief "counselors" with "degrieving" techniques. Such "grief gurus" are "ventilationists": They assume that everyone should grieve the same way -- by venting feelings sometimes elicited by persons who have paid $1,795 for a five-day course in grief counseling.

The "caregiving" professions, which postulate the minimal competence of most people to cope with life unassisted, are, of course, liberal, and politics can color their diagnoses. Remember the theory that because Vietnam was supposedly an unjust war, it would produce an epidemic of "post-traumatic stress disorders." So a study released in 1990 claimed that half of Vietnam veterans suffered from some PTSD -- even though only 15 percent of Vietnam veterans had served in combat units. To ventilationists -- after a flood damaged books at the Boston Public Library, counselors arrived to help librarians cope with their grief -- a failure to manifest grief is construed as alarming evidence of grief repressed, and perhaps a precursor of "delayed onset" PTSD.

Predictably, Sept. 11, 2001, became another excuse for regarding healthy human reactions as pathological. Did terrorist attacks make you angry and nervous? Must be PTSD. And Sept. 11 gave rise to "diagnostic mission creep" as the idea of "trauma" was expanded to include watching a disaster on television. Sommers and Satel's book is a summons to the sensible worry that national enfeeblement must result when therapism replaces the virtues on which the republic was founded -- stoicism, self-reliance and courage.

No mention of how these "grief councelors" helped to "de-grieve" those who voted against Bush in the last election. Although, I did hear that some these grief barers would get together and throw handkerchiefs at one another while yelling, "Hilter!"

Via Dave from Garfield Ridge.